Before falling in love with geometric forms, I spent every spare moment creating large installations out of woven sewing thread. (These woven pieces can be seen at www.stacyspeyer.net.) Most pieces were hand dyed and some were only partially woven, but all took months to make. Many mathematical calculations were essential to organize pieces with nearly 6,000 threads and 30 feet tall.

I always liked numbers, but I needed very little math for my art degrees. Some years ago I decided to...